Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.

The Smallest Kingdom is an illustrated account of the botanical exploration of South Africa's Cape Floral Kingdom and the plants that this region has given to the gardens of the world over the last four centuries. Over Kew's 250 year history, Cape plants and their collectors have contributed greatly to the establishment of the Royal Botanic Gardens,Kew as the pre-eminent centre for botanical research. The book is illustrated throughout with full colour botanical paintings, and will appeal to conservationists, gardeners, botanists, historians, botanical artists, naturalists, and visitors to the Cape.

Beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, this is a scientifically accurate guide to the fynbos biome - the Mediterranean-type vegetation of the Cape Floral Kingdom. With over 8,600 plant species (5,600 endemic) in 90,000 square kilometres, this region is one of the most floristically rich in the world.

In 1837, while charting the Amazonian country of Guiana for Great Britain, German naturalist Robert Schomburgk discovered an astounding "vegetable wonder"--a huge water lily whose leaves were five or six feet across and whose flowers were dazzlingly white. In England, a horticultural nation with a mania for gardens and flowers, news of the discovery sparked a race to bring a live specimen back, and to bring it to bloom. In this extraordinary plant, named Victoria regia for the newly crowned queen, the flower-obsessed British had found their beau ideal. In The Flower of Empire, Tatiana Holway tells the story of this magnificent lily, revealing how it touched nearly every aspect of Victorian life, art, and culture. Holway's colorful narrative captures the sensation stirred by Victoria regia in England, particularly the intense race among prominent Britons to be the first to coax the flower to bloom. We meet the great botanists of the age, from the legendary Sir Joseph Banks, to Sir William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to the extravagant flower collector the Duke of Devonshire. Perhaps most important was the Duke's remarkable gardener, Joseph Paxton, who rose from garden boy to knight, and whose design of a series of ever-more astonishing glass-houses--one, the Big Stove, had a footprint the size of Grand Central Station--culminated in his design of the architectural wonder of the age, the Crystal Palace. Fittingly, Paxton based his design on a glass-house he had recently built to house Victoria regia. Indeed, the natural ribbing of the lily's leaf inspired the pattern of girders supporting the massive iron-and-glass building. From alligator-laden jungle ponds to the heights of Victorian society, The Flower of Empire unfolds the marvelous odyssey of this wonder of nature in a revealing work of cultural history.

This book presents the natural, environmental and scenic richness of the world’s coastal and marine areas classified by UNESCO as “Natural World Heritage Sites”. Representing well-preserved areas of exceptional significance to the planet and to humankind, they include a total of 49 marine sites, formed by reefs, atolls and gulfs, and 35 coastal sites in all oceans and all continents with exception of Antarctica. They are being protected and preserved from most degrading uses for future generations as an important legacy from the past. Exploring their richness, this book analyzes and explains these sites in a clear, understandable, scientific way, and is of interest to all who work in or care about the geosciences, environmental sciences and biosciences.

Floral Evolution shows you how to use accessible flowers to make beautiful floral designs. Author Catherine Foxwell believes that the flowers and beautiful arrangements should be accessible to all, and this book takes you through some simple projects using sustainable techniques to achieve this. She uses readily available, inexpensive flowers in straightforward projects that teach you how to repurpose the bloom into four different displays. Chapters are broken down into Flowers for the Home, Flowers to Give, Flowers to Wear, Flowers for Celebration, Large Arrangements, DIY Wedding Flowers and Special Project. With this step-by-step, extremely accessible approach, anyone can arrange blooms like a pro.